Also in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, news that complaints about green ads are up and that regulators are looking to sink some teeth in.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/regulator-demands-muscle-on-green-ads-20100125-mujk.html
Interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald about how green cleaner Orange Power fell foul of Choice magazine for greenwash, even though their environmental claims weren’t necessarily false.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/proving-cred-is-worth-the-effort-20100125-mujt.html
Nice article summarising people’s personal efforts at being more sustainable and getting plenty of media attention while they’re at it.
The top ten according to this article on Mashable, right here.
A game for the child within reach of a lighter inside us all.
So Copenhagen has everyone’s eyeballs on the web this week and that means YouTube vids a plenty. Here are our pick, in no apparent order:
1. Good to see someone getting smart and using an unexpected personality like Tony Hawk for this one:
2. Sunbaking flash mob showing, as usual, hot girls in bikini will always get [...]
An interesting set of videos we stumbled across. Well, interesting if you’re into music.
Nice article from Trendwatching’s “10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010″. Basically it says that Govts and business will make consumers more sustainable by removing the alternatives.
Read it here: http://trendwatching.com/briefing/#ecoeasy
So I’ve been looking for a bike this week. Not a new bike but a nice, sustainable, second hand bike and I’ve been coming across quite a few of these. Now when I was a lad one of these would have gathered crowds from twelve suburbs away but nowdays I’m seeing them cruise the street [...]
Possibly the most depressing but eye-opening piece of viewing you’ll see today, this feature, broadcast on the ABC, shows the effect that having a garbage patch in the Pacific the size of Texas has on the world’s wildlife. Sad and sadly true.
From their site…”A handpicked crew of adventurers, scientists and creatives are to sail across the Pacific on the ‘Plastiki’ - a 60 foot catamaran made from reclaimed plastic bottles. Their mission is to beat waste by inspiring sustainable solutions and to hight light the ecological damage being done to the world’s oceans.”
The journey starts in [...]
Drawing on the concept of food nutrition labelling, Project Label aims to rate companies based on their social and environmental impact.
From http://www.newspaper.unsw.edu.au/text/stories/more5.htm
Under the weather at the 7 Metre Bar
In a disused laneway in Sydney’s CBD, two UNSW architects have designed a bar that allows patrons to enjoy a drink while virtually experiencing the predicted effects of climate change.
Russell Lowe and Richard Goodwin collaborated with landscape architect Adrian McGregor to create the 7 Metre Bar as [...]
Watching David Berman speak makes you forget that you’re supposed to be learning something. A bundle of hyperactivity, the Canadian designer approaches the question of ‘can design help save the world’ as a both a professional challenge and exciting opportunity.
A welcome break from the dark and stormy forecasts and predictions made by the scientific, [...]
…comes this amazing report from the New York Times that those poverty stricken Saudies and seeking compensation if we all ween our cars and industries off petrol and seek more sustainable means.
Interesting news out of the States. In line with expectations that there are about to become two types of companies in the world, those who make it their mission to do something about climate change and those who make it their mission to change nothing at all. As always, it’s the innovators making the difference…
US focussed, but still interesting for us down in the Antipodes.
Notes from a recent conference we attended. Words by the ever-so-clever Jess Miller…
Can Graphic Design Save the Planet?
No.
Can it help?
Maybe…
How Can Graphic Design Help Save the World, hosted by the Australian Graphic Design Association, featured leading design thinkers including Jacqueline Gothe, Andy Polaine, David Berman and Rick Pryor to share ideas about whether we [...]
1500 entries from around the world. Some lovely entries. See the finalists by clicking here. Our favourites posted below.
OK, nothing new about this but we hadn’t posted it before so here ’tis.
Nice point made with a bit of humour: if you want to be green don’t buy the new green Apple, just stick with your old one.
Global campaign. global TV coverage. Gotta love that.
Good week at the Republic. After winning a Green Globe Award on Tuesday, we won an Interactive Media Award on Wednesday for the Tails for Whales website. So, there you go. Christmas in July ’round here.
So, big news around here the last few days. Our Tails for Whales campaign, created for IFAW, won big last Tuesday at the 2009 Green Globe Awards.
Presented by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change, this was the first year they presented a ‘Media Award for Excellence in Sustainability Communications’ and, yep, we won [...]
One by Matt, one by Ben. We like to keep things kinda equal around the Republic. Click on ‘em to see the big versions.
It’s always a little concerning when we need to be reminded that sustainability means more than green but it does seem to be a theme coming up over and over - are we only at that point still?
We guess it’s a message that needs to repeated so who better to tell it than Adam Werbach, [...]
In case you want a bit more evidence about green going mainstream, here’s a tale from the world of no other than Ronald McDonald.
Let’s face it.
A few years back green was the colour of Kermit and sustainability was a word no-one had ever heard of.
Now it’s being touted as the only way forward to save the way we live, with companies like Toyota, Sony, Microsoft, IBM and FujiXerox making sustainability one of their key business drivers.
The problem [...]
Baraka meets An Inconvenient Truth in this new film by world-renowned photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Launched on World Environment Day the film is available for viewing exclusively on YouTube.
Another one for the ‘wish we did that pile’. This art-as-communication is by Aussie designer Lisa Carney.
Nothing to do with sustainability here, just two very interesting uses of sticky notes.
Good article by Lee Stephens, CEO of Aegis Media Asia Pacific.
George Marshall has an interesting take on talking abut the environment and it’s quite simple: don’t. What does that mean and how does it work? We’ll let him explain for himself. His videos, in no apparent order…
We’re constantly amazed that people still see sustainability as an expense when there is so much evidence to suggest that it could be the next big money spinner (and saver) for big business.
Case in point is this article about Marks & Spencer’s Plan A. Originally vetted to be a five year investment, cost savings have [...]
Today’s Greenrazor email from Greenpages has a write up on our Greenwash Buster.
Also of note, our beer label for Skinny Blonde hit the front page of adsoftheworld.com
That’s what CNN has to say…
Embedded video from CNN Video
Here’s an interesting presentation from the USA, home of Wow. It explains that being consistently good is not quite good enough and that unless your customers can remember some of Wow experiences you have delivered them then you’re going to be forgotten. It’s quite long but you don’t have to watch, just listen to the [...]
Once upon a time Matt Perry wrote a wildly successful textbook. Then Matt and Ben went into business together and Ben found that, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape the creeping jealousy that the scoreline was, and would remain, locked at 1-0.
So, unbeknowst to Matt, Ben sneakily went home and toiled away. [...]
What’s a green truth and what’s a fib? Taking the Myth Busters model and applying it to green claims, this US TV show hunts down the fact from the fiction.
Better still, they’ve been clever enough to figure out that we non-US folk might be interested too and have set up a YouTube channel for [...]
While Australian supermarket chains seem to vie for attention by being the one that can make their apples shiniest or win the award for Cheesiest Smile on a Child in their ads, those overseas are finding real ways to make a difference to the environment that grows the food they make money selling.
Living up to [...]
Fresh in this week’s ‘I want one’ list is the GoCycle.
Nice and small to store in a city apartment and with an electric motor for us Sydneysiders who want a bit of help dealing with the hills.
Introducing the answer to your recyclable coffee cup needs. A big congrats to these people behind the Keep Cup.
For what appears a fairly simple idea they are doing a great job at getting the word out there. We saw them recently at Melbourne’s State of Design Festival and there was a queue 6 people deep [...]
If we’ve ever been in to see you or you’ve looked at our stop whaling campaign for IFAW you’ll now we’re big believers in using social media to create social change. That’s why this news story caught our eye. It’s about some of the more interesting ad virals to hit the we lately.
Read the [...]
Under the delightful category of ‘Greenwash: wiping away the spin’.
A great article by The Big Money magazine.
to read is, go here: http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/greenwash/2009/04/20/four-biggest-enviro-scams
Offering to plant a tree in exchange for someone buying your stuff is nothing new, but the way Threadless has done it through Twitter, Facebook and Vimeo is somehow just a lot sweeter than when the big corporates do it. Like, I almost actually believe that a tree will be planted…
You know your campaign’s gone viral when there are models doing it on the catwalk at New York Fashion Week and you don’t even know about until you read about it on treehugger.com
Here are a few photos from the event, below. Do like a supermodel and add your whale tail to the campaign at tailsforwhales.org [...]
Not too much to say here other than check it out. A sit down Segway masquerading as a car. Supposedly on the drawing board from GM.
Stick a surfboard rack on the roof and we’ll take it.
Read more here.
We’re not sure if it’s cultural or if we’re just too small but every time we see a clever earth and people friendly idea, it comes from somewhere else.
Take a few of these for example all from the UK. For your feet there’s Terra Plana shoes. Great looking kit all ethically and eco-friendly produced. [...]
A cracking idea to help the homeless from a father/son team in the USA. Basically they’ve used the power of the YouTube to help viewers meet homeless people then give viewers a chance to help out. At this stage they’ve collected a wad of cash and 5 day rehab programs for the featured ‘bums’, Tim [...]
Our latest piece of work for the International Fund for Animal Welfare matches the animation genius of Marcelle Lunam with the quietly spoken Daniel Johns. Editing and camerawork kindly by The Happy Farm.
Daniel Johns for IFAW from Ben Peacock on Vimeo.
A few interesting things that landed in our inbox this week. The first is the best description of the financial crisis we’ve seen yet.
The second, an art piece by Petra Cortright.
The third is an advertising agency in Amsterdam which has been fitted out entirely in cardboard, 500 square metres of it. Just pray [...]
Accounting firm PWC is showing their cool and funky side with a new Facebook app that let’s you find out just how big your contribution to the world’s woes really is.
Annoyingly USA focussed - c’mon guys, it’s a global problem - but still worth a look.
See it here.
OK, so we know this is just unashamed self promotion but at least we bundled it all into one blog post to get it over shortly and sweetly. Basically Matt and Ben have been in the media a bit lately, proving that doing good can get you noticed. Here are a few snippets.
From this month’s [...]
thisisreality.org have got their paws on some heavyweight Hollywood to direct this new ad speaking out against the whole concept of clean coal.
Why do we like it? Because they have grasped the idea that the best way to discuss serious environmental issues is to entertain while you get the message across.
If you liked An Inconvenient Truth then you’ll probably like this movie too. And if you hated Inconvenient Truth then…well you probably won’t be reading our blog anyway so what’s it matter.
So, let’s start again: if you loved An Inconvenient Truth then this is the next must-see movie for you. It’s called the Age of [...]
Right, so we all know that living large is chewing up the planet’s resources. Question is, if we were to get all microeconomic about it would the opportunity cost of global warming, pollution and a one third reduction of the world’s natural resources in the last hundred years or so be worth the increase we [...]
Fashion is fleeting, right? It doesn’t matter if it falls apart ’cause this year’s fluoro is next year’s faux pas, right? Well, hopefully not anymore. In another flashback to doing things the way our great grandparents did (see post: Green Grannies), fashion brand Howies has released a range of clothes built tougher to last longer, [...]
We’ve just stumbled upon this fantastic piece of help-you-sort-your-life genius. In short, it’s a website that asks how green you want to be then sets you a to-do list based on your home, lifestyle and other activities. We’re signed up and we’re onto it and we’ll tell you how we go. Must say though, it [...]
Just when you thought eco products couldn’t get any more unique, in comes the coffee and tea straw. That’s right, why brew a whole pot when you only need a cup? Just stick your tea leaves in the chamber of the straw and stick it in warm water. No more tea bags, no more coffee [...]
An article we noticed in a recent edition of Time magazine. Good to see the issue is getting the press it deserves. even better to see that some of the big companies are taking it seriously and doing something about it. Click the pic to download the whole article as a pdf.
If we had a dollar for everyone who’s said to us, ‘well it was a nice idea to have a sustainability agency but that must be all off the agenda now what with the financial crisis’, well, we’d already have retired to our ecologically friendly beach houses.
As it is, we’re not quite retired yet but [...]
Oh bring it on we say. While people like us are busy trying to make saving the world cool and mainstream those geniuses over at Oxfam have worked out that the true superheros of the world don’t wear capes and masks and their undies on the outside. And if they do, it’s most likely to [...]
Here’s a great idea out of Canada. The 15 Below Jacket is a jacket shell featuring lots and lots of pockets that you stuff with newspaper to keep you warm. Ostensibly designed to help people living on the street stay warm in a little more comfort, the real idea of the project is to [...]
This idea is about as Republic of Everyone as you can get. Brought to you by playingforchange.com all it took was one god song, two blokes, a few mics and a whole pile of airline tickets. Oh yes, and the buskers of the world, of course. Beautiful.
So, is there any value in taking your gas guzzling, coal burning, environmentally flabby product and giving it an energy efficient, recyclable makeover? Plenty of people out there will say ‘no way, green is a flash in the pan’ but Steve Jobs, arguably the world’s most interesting CEO of the world’s most interesting company, isn’t [...]
Jealous, jealous, jealous. That’s what we were when we saw this. Beautifully conceived, honestly written and simply shot on nothing more advanced than a cameraphone. Good to see art and conscience still going so well hand in hand.
A bit of shameless self promotion really, but we were quite happy to note that our work for the International Fund for Animal Welfare is this week’s featured case study for Marketing Magazine. See the article here.
Nice piece of work from Greenpeace in the USA. Gives you that warm fuzzy feeling that maybe, as a great man once said, the times they are a changing.
We don’t just make ads. On the odd occasion we star in them as well. In this charity spot produced by our friends Notice Corp. Ben plays the Grim Reaper. Let’s just say it was a long hot shoot on Rollerblades.
One of our fathers sent us this one so we thought we’d share it with you, dear readers. After all, when the world’s going down the toilet you have to keep a sense of humour.
Let’s face it, in many ways we’d all rather recycle our used items than not, it’s just that sometimes it’s impossible to know where to find someone to take our used goodies. So instead, our old TVs, sofas and all the rest of it end up on the street or in landfill. A bit of [...]
Wow what a week on the stock market hey? It makes you wonder what to invest in now or whether anyone is ever going to have any money again to invest at all.
Which makes this story from Reuters via news.com.au quite timely. It talks about the success of Belgium’s ethical bank Triodos and its significant [...]
Isn’t it great how in this day and age good ideas can be built upon? Ever since stealing someone else’s guitar riff was reclassified from thievery to sampling we have more and more of this remixing, ending up (so far) as ‘mashing’ and ‘hacking’.
One great example of this is http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com where people buy a [...]
If you’re wondering when the web and TV will come together sites like this one might hold the answer for you. Not backward in coming forward, this 20 minute video is stacked with facts and questions the linear relationship of consumption on the environment (ie: lots out, nothing back).
The tone of voice is no [...]
Nothing to do with sustainability here, just a gorgeous piece of animation that goes in the basket of goodies labelled, ‘We wish we’d done that’.
While we’re rabbiting on about innovation, here’s a piece of packaging innovation whose time has come.
Could this recyclable paper tetra pack water bottle be the answer to plastic water bottles? Hey, here’s hoping.
And if you thought that was cool, check this out. A room’s worth of furniture in one box. For the full [...]
If you’ve ever had your ear chewed off by us in a meeting or at the pub you’ll know that in our opinion sustainability is a subset of innovation.
Climate change, depleting stocks of fossil fuels and an increasingly jaded or burned out workforce are the problems and clever businesses will not only adapt to [...]
It’s a bit of a hot question right now and we think the answer is best summed up by the appearance of this article.
If people are prepared to go the trouble of stealing solar panels then the demand is obviously…ahem, through the roof…but on the other hand given that we’re talking about theft here [...]
We’re not sure if this has anything to do with sustainability, marketing or advertising but it’s definitely fascinating.
It’s by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University and it looks at the history of the internet and how people have been the most important technology of all in how it all fits [...]
We’ve been keeping an eye on MTV’s Switch campaign for a while. Not because it offers anything incredibly new in terms of ideas for actually saving the world but because it does a pretty good job of making sustainability something those hard-to-talk-to young folk might be interesting in and adds the attitude that gives social [...]
We always like to troll the newspapers on a Monday and see what the weekend brought.
Two articles caught the eye.
The first article is about the death of the 30 second TV ad. With people buying Tivo and switching to downloading TV series from iTunes and the line there is simply no room for advertisers anymore [...]
What makes a greenwash? How do we separate the spurious claims from the truth, why have ethical investments outperformed ordinary ones and what is it like to come from so called ‘dark side’ of advertising and marketing and make it your mission to sell sustainability and help humankind stay happy on the earth.
These are the [...]
The Age reports today that Australia’s big greenhouse polluters are doing less than their global counterparts to combat global warming and, in doing so, risking cost blowouts, regulatory burden and damage to their reputation.
Some of the key points include:
48% of Australia’s largest 200 companies are classified as having a high or very high potential impact [...]
Politics aside, we were fascinated to come across this page which is dedicated to nothing more than helping you understand what $315 billion dollars looks like.
Imagine what that dough could do for the environment if deployed in a clever way.
This is so hot off the press that we haven’t even had time to upload it to our portfolio page yet.
If you go back through our portfolio you’ll see that last year we created IFAW’s Save the Whales campaign with a series of 3D installation posters featuring blood and would be whale guts spewed [...]
In case you missed it, tonight’s episode of the ABC’s Q&A was a cracker…the first half at least.
Climate change was the issue. Penny Wong and Malcolm Turnbull agreed on a surprising number of issues, Tim Flannery kept things cool, calm and scientific while Catherine Harris, Chairwoman of fresh produce retailer, Harris Farm Markets put in [...]
At the risk of giving the competition a plug we noticed this article announcing the launch of Saatchi & Saatchi Sustainability in this week’s Australian Financial Review.
On one hand this is promising. It’s good to have competition, it keeps everyone on their toes and means that clients are demanding more sustainable thinking which can only [...]
This is the sort of idea we like. It’s funny, it brings people together and it’s all about helping create a better world. Best of all it’s powered by a lemon and coming to a town near you.
Bring on the climate torch…
(And yes, we’ve already signed up to wield the baton)
Here’s an article Ben wrote for Greenpages magazine about his own personal thoughts about why buyiong less might be good for more than just the planet. It’s their top story right now but you can save yourself one valuable mouseclick and also enjoy the author’s unabridged version by reading it right here.
It was a good weekend. For the first time in a while we had a few minutes to kick back with the newspaper. Here are a few of the stories that caught our eye.
Holden Commodore Australia’s top polluter
It turns out Australia’s favourite home made family car is also the most expensive to run and the [...]
The sequel to the rather clever original.
This article appeared in the last issue of AdNews. It goes a long way to explaining how we feel about Cannes, advertising festivals and the future relevance of the industry as a whole if we fail to start heeding Al Gore’s words from last year and start considering the social and environmental impacts of our [...]
If you are trying to get your head around sustainable business Presidio school of management very kindly made a dictionary for us.
You really do have to question who knows what when it comes to solving the climate change problem. Sure there is not a simple answer to solving complex problems like balancing economies and reducing carbon in an industrialised nation! However, surely Australia should be looking at sustainability as an opportunity to revolutionise the economy (and [...]
For all those business skeptics out there wondering whether profitable sustainability is achievable Ray Anderson tells you how to do it…..
Could this be the most sustainable passtime ever? Michel Lauziere uses recycled bottles and earth friendly transport to create a symphony in the streets. Strange but cool.
